In the interview, Zac discusses the planning and development process for KickSat, the technology that made the miniaturized Sprite satellites possible, and the volunteer network of radio operators who will detect the signals from the Sprites once they deploy.

Todd Curtis completes the Boston MarathonThe 2014 Boston Marathon took place on Monday April 21, 2014, with over 36,000 registered runners, including AirSafe.com's Dr. Todd Curtis, who completed the course in 4:47:06. This was his third Boston Marathon, and this year he ran with Team Brookline in support of the nonprofit Brookline Library Foundation of Brookline, Massachusetts.

He's asking for your support to complete his goal of getting $5,000 in donations. as of the day of the Marathon, he 95% there, and he hopes that you can put him over the top. The AirSafe.com Foundation is also supporting this effort, and 100% of all donations made before the end of April will go toward Todd's Marathon donation efforts.

How you can helpIf you want to contribute to the AirSafe.com Foundation (a 501(c)(3) organization), to help support this effort, please so by the end of this month. As an added incentive, special contributors will receive the following:

$250 - The first person to contribute at $250 will receive an autographed official bib that Todd wore during the Marathon.

$500 - The first person to contribute $500 will receive Adidas 2014 Boston Marathon Supernova Tee (Men's XL) that was issued to all registered runners.

$2000+ - The first person to contribute $2000 or more can choose to receive all three special incentives.

Remember, these special incentives are available on a first come, first served basis. Please donate to the AirSafe.com Foundation using the link below:

Update on the AirSafe.com satelliteOn Friday April 18th, the SpaceX CRS-3 vehicle successfully launched a number of payloads into orbit, including including one carrying AirSafe.com's first satellite.

The satellite is scheduled to be deployed at about 4:00 PM EDT (20:00 GMT) on May 4th, and will start the active portion of its mission soon thereafter. Please follow AirSafe.com on Twitter for satellite updates.

If you are interested in learning how you can set up a ground station to detect the signals from the satellites once they deploy, check out the KickSat Wiki, which is run by Zac Manchester, who created the KickSat project.

20 April 2014

21 April 2014 - The Boston Marathon happens the third Monday of April, and this year it will feature 36,000 runners, including including AirSafe.com's Dr. Todd Curtis (who will be wearing number 29457). The weather forecast calls for sunny skies, light winds, and warm temperatures. For those of you in the Boston area, we hope you take the time to go out and enjoy the spectacle.

Update on the AirSafe.com satellite launchOn Friday April 18th, the SpaceX CRS-3 vehicle successfully launched a number of payloads into orbit, including including one carrying AirSafe.com's first satellite.

The satellite is scheduled to be deployed at about 4:00 PM EDT (20:00 GMT) on May 4th, and will start the active portion of its mission soon thereafter. Please follow AirSafe.com on Twitter for satellite updates.

18 April 2014

18 April 2014 - SpaceX mission (CRS-3), which successfully launched today, is headed to the International Space Station as its primary mission, and it is also carrying a number of secondary payloads, including one that is carrying AirSafe.com's first satellite.

About the satelliteOne of the secondary payloads carries KickSat, which was developed in part by Cornell University Zac Manchester and funded through a campaign on KickStarter. Later in the flight, the KickSat will deploy a constellation of 104 small satellites called “Sprites” which are about 3.2-centimetre (1.26 in) square in size, and carry miniaturised solar cells, a gyroscope, magnetometer and a radio system for communication. The AirSafe.com satellite, once deployed, will broadcast a short five character message, "ASC96," which represents the site AirSafe.com, and its launch year, 1996.

Upcoming events
In the next few days, the satellite, which is now inside the KickSat secondary payload, will be fully deployed and start broadcasting. When that happens, we will report on the success of that deployment, and on the success of the other deployed KickSats. At that time we will also reveal the official name of AirSafe.com's satellite, and how it will honor the aerospace pioneers who inspired it.

07 April 2014

The 2014 Boston Marathon will take place in two weeks on Monday April 21, 2014, with over 36,000 registered runners, including AirSafe.com's Dr. Todd Curtis. This will be his third Boston Marathon, and this year he is running with Team Brookline in support of the nonprofit Brookline Library Foundation of Brookline, Massachusetts.

He's asking for your support to help his goal of $5,000 in donations. The AirSafe.com Foundation is also supporting this effort, and 100% of all donations made before race day will go toward the Brookline Library Foundation

Todd on why he's runningThe Boston Marathon is more than just an athletic event, it is an event that involves the entire community. I've run the race twice before, and I can assure you that it is an experience like no other. After last year's tragedy, I felt like many people in the Boston area and around the world in that we were determined to make the 2014 Marathon bigger and better for everyone.
Your support will help my chosen charity the Brookline Library Foundation, and the rest of the Boston area, move forward in a positive way.

The number to watchOver 36,000 runners will be in the marathon, and if you want to keep your eyes on Todd, just follow his number:

01 April 2014

1 April 2014 - As the search for flight MH370 enters the middle of its fourth full week, what is known about the flight is still greatly overshadowed by what is not known. The key unknowns are the location of the aircraft, and why it diverted from its planned destination. The search is concentrated in the southern Indian Ocean to the west of Australia, in an area that is roughly the size of Nicaragua or Pennsylvania, and so far no part of the aircraft has been recovered.

Search area from 31 March 2014

CTV television of Canada asked Dr. Todd Curtis a number of questions about the search and the investigation, and those questions and answers are below.

Australia has deployed an air traffic controller due to the crowded search for MH370. Why do you think they felt this was necessary?There has to be some coordination of air traffic in the area. In spite of the large size of the search area, which at 120,000 sq km is about one quarter the size of the Yukon territory (and about the size of Greece or Pennsylvania), there exists the risk, however small, of midair collisions. Centralized coordination of the activities of the search aircraft may also enhance the effectiveness of the search.

Malaysia has been criticized for its handling of the search, and on Monday, the government changed its account of the final voice transmission from the cockpit. They told media the final words were ‘Good night Malaysian three-seven-zero’ not ‘all right, good night.’ Why do you think this is significant, and how is it possible Malaysia made an error like this?.It is perplexing how such an error would be made. Like many, I'm waiting for a detailed explanation for this change from the Malaysian authorities. While the Malaysian government has released the transcript, I'm not aware of any release of the actual recording of the air to ground transmissions.

While it is normal procedure for accident investigation authorities to release only release relevant parts of a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcript and to not release the actual CVR audio, typically the audio content of air to ground communications with air traffic control would be freely available.

In fact, in many countries one can legally intercept and even rebroadcast such communications. The site liveatc.net routinely does this for dozens of airports around the world.

It’s been more than three weeks since the plane disappeared – are you surprised searchers haven’t been able to find a single piece of debris?It is not surprising given that it was about two and a half weeks ago on March 24th (16 days after the aircraft went missing) that a general area of the southern Indian Ocean was determined to be the most likely area to find the aircraft, and on March 28th there was a refinement of that estimate that moved the search area to its current location.

In short, searchers have had only about five days to focus their efforts in the current search area. In spit of these delays, it is possible that debris has already been spotted from the aircraft, ships, and satellites employed in this search. However, confirmation that any piece of debris is from flight MH370 is a rather slow process that depends on the debris being brought back to Australia for analysis.

What about the black box on board – how much time is left to locate it?Based on the Air France flight 447 experience, if the black boxes are relatively intact and the recording media is not damaged, they can be immersed in the sea for at least two years and still retain their data. It is unclear how much longer such devices could remain in the ocean before the data would be at risk.

There are so many countries involved in this search, including regional superpowers like India, global superpowers like China – have there been jurisdictional issues that have delayed the search/interfered with the process?There do not seem to have been jurisdictional issues, in part because of a widely accepted framework (Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation) which lays out the responsibilities nations have in the event of an airline accident or missing airliner. Specifically, if an aircraft is presumed lost outside of the jurisdiction of any of the signatory nations (in this case, the presumed location is in international waters), the country of registration, in this case Malaysia, has primary responsibility for the investigation.

There appears to have been management and coordination issues that have delayed the progress of the investigation. This is partly due to the nature of this event where it was necessary to use military information like radar data from several countries, and unconventional resources and procedures such as the analysis of data from communications and imaging satellites.

No one country had all of these resources under their direct supervision, so it is likely that there would have been delays in the process regardless of which nation was leading the investigation.

Winter is coming to the Southern hemisphere – what sort of challenges is that going to cause?It is likely that search operations will be hampered by the rougher sea conditions and more challenging weather conditions that accompany winter in that part of the Indian Ocean. It would also depend on the progress made in the investigation by the time winter arrives, and on the kinds of resources used in the search and recovery effort. If parts of the aircraft have been identified at a specific location on the bottom of the ocean, documenting and retrieving the wreckage could potentially take place even in winter.